The world's largest disaster relief body appealed yesterday for 6.7 million Swiss francs ($9.13 million) to save people from starvation in Tajikistan where, it said, children foraged in ratholes for food.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said 1 million Tajiks - a sixth of the population - urgently needed food aid to survive the winter after a second successive drought .
"People are in poor health, children are malnourished ... We saw desperate children digging in ratholes to grab whatever wheat grains they could find to take home," federation team leader Roger Bracke said in Geneva.
The agency, citing poor responses by Western countries to appeals for the poorest of the former Soviet republics, said its realistic aim was to provide food to 130,000 of the most vulnerable people.
Starvation appeal launched by Red Cross
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.